51–60 of 107 posts
Brit here. Is the 'stop or I'll shoot' thing a myth or does it actually happen in the US? i.e. do police in the US shoot suspects when there is no threat other than the risk they will get away?
What exactly do you means by "there is no threat"?
As this article talks about firing multiple rounds per encounter is the norm it nigh be worth pointing out that the whole German police fired less than 100 shots at person per year for the last decade. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_i...
Perhaps the solution to police killings is to disarm the police. The current default--police have weapons and can use them as they see fit--seems not to be working.
This is a problem with the gun violence issue as a whole. The use of guns is absurdly high across the board.
Perhaps the solution to police killings is to disarm the police. The current default--police have weapons and can use them as they see fit--seems not to be working.
US police have 2nd Amendment rights like anyone else, so that seems unlikely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or better training and actual accountability. It's not like cops use tasers judiciously and intelligently.
Tasers are not all that non-lethal :( Police ought to be part of the community, rather than some external paramilitary force. Their behavior would then be modulated through social mechanisms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly. But, another name for “non-lethal weapon” is “cheap and effective compliance tool”. With those, we risk making many forms of protest and civil disobedience difficult or impossible.
That's not an issue, as long as police act lawfully, and laws allow protest and civil disobedience.
I knew, there is a glitch!
Brit here. Is the 'stop or I'll shoot' thing a myth or does it actually happen in the US? i.e. do police in the US shoot suspects when there is no threat other than the risk they will get away?
Yep. Watch the Walter Scott footage: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/shot-and...
Maybe what's needed are better non-lethal weapons for police.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly do you means by "there is no threat"?
I think he means that a suspect does not have a weapon in hand but the officer still has a gun pointed at the suspect.
The answer is no sane officer is going to shoot a non-dangerous person. Although the nature of non-dangerous is the problem. Several cases (New Mexico) that should have been national outrages have gone unreported, but a case (Ferguson) that the final report said was justified were demonized (although the report does make some very valid points about the police department in general and should have been part of an investigation years before). How we keep ignoring the problems with flash bangs, I will never know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about loading the first round with blanks. Some times just the sound of the shot is enough to startle and stop a suspect. Shooting in the air would be an option too, but it could be a little problematic, as what goes up, must come down. The blank option would also give an officer a split second to maybe rethink his actions. And if the officer really needs to use lethal force, it's easy to quickly squeeze off 2 ro…
No. From experience, the only other rounds that would go into my magazine were tracer rounds. Additionally, the mechanics of how these weapons work make that not possible. Edit: Beyond the above, from a tactical perspective...just think through the game theory on that and you'll see why that would be unwise.
I suppose that logically speaking, if I know that most cops have a blank loaded as their first shot, logically, I shouldn't be startled by the first shot. But that said, an encounter like that is so traumatic, to both the officer and the suspect, that I hardly think any one in that situation is thinking very logically at the time of the encounter.